Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Woah!

Starting with Swamp Thing was good enough for me. Yet, as a lucky reader of SBTB, I also get ‘Imma Birth You Woman’ for a low low price!

Thanks SB’s!

What’s he gonna touch? How can he get familiar?? She has no lady parts!!!  Bad cover , proportions are such that she appears to be the size of a preteen, with no bottom half.  She has no trunk in which to put his junk. At least she doesn’t have to worry about him pressuring her for the buttsecks LOL.

You know, I’m willing to design her a cover FOR FREE, just so my retinas will never be assaulted this way again. Sheesh.

It’s like drunk driving - just because you have a car it doesn’t mean you know how operate it while intoxicated. The same concept should apply to photoshop.

Just because you own a copy of photoshop does not mean you should use it.

Umm…correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Dara Joy the lady who ripped off her customers a few years back? Why would anyone contemplate buying a book from her again?

And, yes, the cover is hideous.

It looks like a man holding either a belly-dancer lamp or a matrushka doll to cover his nakedness when caught unawares. V. sexy.

This is the most repellent cover I’ve seen in a while.  It is not ‘artistic’ it is a horrific maiming of several artistic styles.  Did her copy of Photoshop explode? I’m sure her scanner did.  On top of that, I have the suspicion that the reason for the ‘collage’ effect was some ‘borrowed’ photographs?

Our eyes!

It burns us.

Looks like someone bought the “Bride of Frankenstein” kit—from a yard sale and some of the parts were missing. And the first dude looks like he’s wearing a wig that was soaked in radioactive material. “Look ma, I glow in the dark now!”

Pass the bleach, please.

The scary thing is that these covers aren’t well done enough to appear on this site: http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

I agree with Caroline.  They should have stopped at the first cover and just re-released with a different hair color.  Pass me the bleach.

Oh, you people with your high expectations. It’s not really bad ... if one wanted a good laugh. And ROTFLMAO I did! What a glorious spectacle to behold first thing in the morning. Excuse me while I continue to stare and giggle.

Is that a cave entrance in her neck?

On a positive(?) note: I like his lipstick shade better than hers.

um, thank you, I think.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Bwaaahhhh. Charlie Foxtrot works too.

Definately a case of the cover keeping me from even picking this up much less buying it.

it’s too early in the morning for this kind of horror…..

Ah, I was missing me some snark…thank you!

When I saw the 1st, I was so happy - because now I know what Bret Michaels keeps under that Bandanna!

That 2nd one…oh, to be so lucky to have such awfulness with which to start my day.

It appears to me that the man who had Bo Derek’s head pasted to his body has a horrible medical condition in which his man parts have morphed into a bitty belly dancer. It’s quite tragic, really…and he goes to support group where other men who suffer similar issues get together to cry and laugh and be free. It’s where he met his two best buddies: Mr. Crotch Has a Cactus Growing Out of It and Mr. Team of Wild Stallions is Parading Out of My Pants. They are thinking of starting a band.

Holy crap.

Gah! Shades of pedophilia there!

Perhaps the artist has recently discovered the joys of bad midget porn? I mean, really, this looks like the covers of some of those skeevy movies they hide behind a curtain at the back of the video store. Or so I’ve heard. >.>

LOL your snark delights me :-D truly that is a crime against photoshop.

Jebus my eyes hurt now.  Plus, mind you, the book is terrible as well.  She really had alot of talent but once she hit the ebook scene it seems to have gone way downhill!

What the hell happened to that woman’s left arm?  And why is Cher’s head pasted onto some legless woman’s body? 

I enjoyed Dara Joy’s books when I was in college, but now I just pay attention to her for the trainwreck.  It’s sad, really.

Spamword: cent36—I wouldn’t pay 36 cents for this book.

Ow. Just. Ow.

Oscar. Mike. Gulf. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Bravo. Bravo. Quebec.

Ev, Charlie Foxtrot for damn sure!

Spam word: game73 NO! I am NOT game for 73 more of these covers…at least not while taking a drink of coffee….

Why is the man (if that is a man) wearing pink lipstick and cornrows?

Oscar. Mike. Gulf. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Bravo. Bravo. Quebec.

I need to put that on a t-shirt! *runs to CafePress*

I’m next up for the eye bleach.  Euuwwww!

Maybe the cover is advertising the book as a comedy….

She is the junk in his trunk to riff off of rebjy.  Is this some new fangled paranormal story?

That is just heinous on so many levels, and makes some of the crappy photoshop jobs of Lord of the Rings porn look like Michelangelo. The Theban Band’s stuff is gorgeous in comparison to this shite!

I mean, the first one is bad bad bad, but the second…the guy is hugging a tiny Angelina Jolie Sims FFS.

Spam word: across95. Yes, I WOULD rather walk across I-95 than have to look at these covers again.

Can’t stop laughing at the comments and people are coming to check on me in my office. Especially this: “It looks like a man holding either a belly-dancer lamp or a matrushka doll to cover his nakedness when caught unawares.”

Oh God. I am really crying. Laughing. 

The first guy? Speechless.

This must be a paranormal book—what they’re attempting to depict is ectoplasm, which was produced by experienced mediums of the Victorian age. Sometimes entire unformed bodies would emanate from the mediums’, complete with hair and fingernails, sort of like ovarian cysts.

And there’s nothing more lovely than THAT.

I know why his “touch” is so familiar to himself.  It’s the only one he’s had, or can possibly hope to ever get.

I’ve managed to come up with enough words to write three novels.

But for these covers? NO WORDS. NONE.

Before this whole thing fries my brain…. the first cover… is that supposed to be a male? A female? Or a she-male? *prays that it’s a she-male*

Spam word: Self99. Oh yeah, I’ll whip myself 99 times to forget about those covers. hell, I could have done better with a clothing catalog from Sears and some glue.

I’m agnostic, but…Jesus Christ. 

Frankly I find most epubbed covers to be pretty heinous, but these take the cake.

Good Lord.  I could do better than that, and I have no Photoshop skills to speak of….

#1 looks like someone who’s been through heavy chemotherapy and was given an enormous box of yarn with which to braid herself a wig.

#2 looks like a Star Trek transporter accident in which most of the Addams family was accidentally fused together (I can identify parts of Lurch, Morticia, and Thing at the least….).

Aha! I got it.  That woman is his Cojoined Twin Sister who never completed separated!  Wow…now that’s incest.  Ewww…..

VERIFICATION: cannot26 CANNOT is quite the appropriate word!

Delurking to say that I really have nothing to say except OMG! Those covers are fugly! The comments are fabulous, btw!

Oh dear…

and he goes to support group where other men who suffer similar issues get together to cry and laugh and be free. It’s where he met his two best buddies: Mr. Crotch Has a Cactus Growing Out of It and Mr. Team of Wild Stallions is Parading Out of My Pants. They are thinking of starting a band.

MamaNice, I canNOT stop laughing at this!!

Ah, the touching story of a man, his cornrows, and his not quite lifesize cardboard woman.

I think…think mind you, I’m not sure…that he’s supposed to be touching *her*, that is, caressing her breasts and magic hoo-hoo, rather than shielding his junk. But why, o why, could she not just find a pic of a couple that were actually, like, in the same room. Or at least on the same continent. I have a suggestion for the cover “artist”: a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors and a glue stick.

From the cover(s) I thought this book was about Poser zombies. BRAINS!

I keep coming back to stare (and giggle). It’s so mesmerizing. I am *dazzled* for sure. Buttercup’s Wesley’s words keep running through my head flashing in neon -  “Dear God, what is that thing?” will echo in your perfect ears. That is what “to the pain” means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.

With apologies to John Webster.

“Cover his face”

“Mine eyes dazzle”

“He died young” (I hope)

Guy #2 is clearly holding the family jewels—his—which would certainly make that touch familiar. And creepy.

Seriously, this is why e-pubs won’t get any respect. How any publisher could think this is acceptable is beyond me. They either hate the writer on whose work these offenses are committed or they hate the readers and want to blind them. Or maybe it’s some maniacal marketing ploy: Hey, if the cover is bad enough, it’ll get snarked on SBTB! Bring on the Photoshop and lots of it!

It’s not possible Ms. Joy did this herself, is it?

@Darlynne: the book is self-published.  LOL

Seriously, this is why e-pubs won’t get any respect.

I couldn’t agree more, darlynne.

Perhaps the artist has recently discovered the joys of bad midget porn?

Must ... not ... Google ...

Why do e-books get covers anyway? I mean, this is obviously a class in its own among hideous e-book covers, and I nearly fell off my chair and spit orange juice on my keyboard when I saw it, but I think most of them are fugly anyway…and it’s not as if e-book readers spend hours gazing lovingly at the cover before they start reading, is it?

#2 = Aliens

Does his chin look like Michael Jackson’s to anyone else? And I think he should have gone with Crimson Sheen instead of Sparkle Blush for his lipstick. (Twilight fan maybe?)

And that poor woman needs to invest some of her Saturday night singles in a good brassiere. Holding them up like that must be exhasting.

She looks Reeeeeeeally pissed off too.

First cover: What is his/her hair actually made of? Did they just cut a hair shape out of a photo of hay or something?

Second cover: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’m compromising by wheezing in asthmatic confusion. What the fucking fuck?

Dude…he’s so totally charging his lasers!

what bothers me the most… Ok, I have to admit, there is so much wrong with this picture, I cannot choose. But I still keep getting the thought “She’s got two frigging elbows on one arm!” running through my head.

-table22: Maybe if I hit my head on the table 22 times, I will give myself amnesia….

Ow. Just, ow.

But ya know, the guy rather reminds me of the lead singer from “Dead or Alive”...yeah, I’ve been living an 80’s flashback lately!

I would send this to a good friend who is a graphic designer for her scathing take on but am afraid she would disown me.

Holy mother of…wow.  Just wow.

This is awful.  Just wow.  I kind of want there to be mutant dolphins in the background jumping out of the mint foil ocean, but that would probably open a black hole or trigger Armageddon or something.

All I’m sayin’ is…Go to her website.

THIS is why people should be required to have a license to drive their computers. Just because you have some kinda hardware and photo editing software, doesn’t mean you should use it or call yourself a graphic artist. WTF indeed.

The first guy looks kind of like a radioactive Charles the Second.  That second pic?  Skinny-dipper shielding his goodies with a half-size cardboard cutout, I guess, but what’s up with the neon purple sky with what looks like Jupiter in the background?  Is this supposed to be an SF novel?  Boggles the mind.

I just want to speak up in defense of Adobe victims everywhere.  I use Illustrator and it’s a nightmare program. Completely non-intuitive, unnecessarily complicated… and strangely addicting. I am currently obsessed with lens flares. I love me my lens flares and I don’t care about any alleged light source.

Maybe SB could host an Adobe cover competition or fundraiser.  There could be multiple categories: Best, worst, worst of the worst, insanely worstest, and lastly, eye bleed.  No need to break out category by genre; they’d all be paranormal—beyond normal.

Pass the eye bleach. PLEASE. NOW. RIGHT NOW.

Holy baloney what the heck is going on!

Gives a whole new meaning to Spanking the Monkey… or rather spanking the unfortunate victim of “OMG I have a buttocks coming out of my chest” surgery (from the Greek, meaning “hand work”)

For the first cover, I could just laugh and say “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” But that second one…

DO NOT WANT.

I have come back to this site a few times this morning and still cannot believe what I’m seeing!!  I think my favorite is “That Familiar Touch”—oh, the horror!  It’s giving me a serious case of the giggles.  The yellow eyes (the bully from “A Christmas Story” couldn’t compare).  I love the hay hair and the pensive look—I’ve felt the same way on a bad hair day!

Geez, I need to take a break from the laughing and return later today.

Soosha!  Her name is Soosha…

Come on—it takes skill to make something look that terrible and then leave it like that.

But did any of you dare to click over and read the excerpt? HTF did this woman become a NYT’s bestselling author? It’s all TELL TELL TELL compounded by POV issues (we’re in heroine’s POV, but her eyes gleam with anticipation). I mean wow, you really CAN judge this book by its cover (either one).

Ow, ow, ow. 
EEEwww

The guy with the chartreuse hair and eyes is likely to set off a migraine attack if I were to look at the picture for too long. What the other one does to my brain I won’t even describe.

These both need to be nominated for next year’s Cover Cafe Worst Covers.  Ye gods, that 2nd one looks like a 3-year old sneaked into the study and started randomly clicking the mouse on a Photoshop program. 

Just when I thought “professional” cover art couldn’t find a new low…

It’s the Man with a Genie in his Peenie! And I now have some horribly bastardized version of the I Dream of Jeannie song stuck in my head.

Out, out, you horrid scarring images!

Jessa Slade said:

I love me my lens flares and I don’t care about any alleged light source.

OK, this totally reminds me of this Onion article:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28225

So, someone knows the feeling.  It’s irresistible!

it’s not as if e-book readers spend hours gazing lovingly at the cover before they start reading, is it?

No, but it helps in shopping.  I’m far more likely to click on a book with an intriguing cover than some boring placeholder icon.  Just like in real life, come to think of it.

Oh, Dara Joy, what happened to you?  Your books were so charming and enticing, and such fun.  And now look at you.

decision88:  this would be the culmination of maybe 88 VERY BAD decisions…

oh lookie, it’s the incredible vanishing woman! dear god, I don’t think my eyes will ever recover from this pile of crap.

Whoa!  Put down the mouse and slowly back away from the Photoshop.

I can’t decide if the first is a really ugly man or not. *shudders*

My kneejerk reaction (and really, that’s the only type of reaction possible with these covers) to the second is that maybe it’s some twisted story about Gulliver and the Lulliputian Harem Dancer. Or maybe they’re twins and it’s more symbiotic than romantic.

Either way, ick. Ick, ick, ick.

And my hubby (who is a computer geek weilding a computer art degree and proudly displays a sign on his desk that reads “Photoshop: Helping the ugly since 1988”) suppressed his gag reflex and asked me what in the name of all that is cut and pasted is that???? (There was mixed revulsion and disdain in the last word, BTW)

I’m thinking that would be “Ralphunzel, Ralphunzel, your hair is soo slick”.

The old Dara Joy was like crack in written ; I even own a copy of this one.  Of course I had to work to get it actually sent after being charged for it.  Now I get a vaguely nauseous when I see her name, followed by the sad nostalgia that I feel for things like the taste of Spaghettio’s before they added the extra calcium.

I need to bleach my brain. Forget the eyes, I’m going to see that one in my sleep.

...

...

...

I simply have no words. But I’m crying my eyes out from laughter and my brain is thanking me, because it’s pissed that my eyes ever gazed upon this imagery.

Oscar. Mike. Gulf. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Bravo. Bravo. Quebec.

I AM making this into a tee shirt. Thank you all for the Friday evening hilarity between bath times.

{{{sigh}}}  I’d love to be able to spend megabucks on graphics software I could operate with my eyes closed.  It’s one of my fondest dreams.

That is horrible. Just, horrible.

it’s literally a woman trapped in a man’s body! this was taken as he prepared to head out for some special surgery.

Obviously, the book is set in the world of the circus.  The hero is a sideshow freak with a conjoined female twin growing out of his chest.  Spamword money26:  obviously, he only exhibits himself like that for the money.

Holy schmoly, that’s some craptastic cover art!

Anyone else notice how strangely long her fingers are? It’s like she’s channeling ET.

Oh no!  I thought her follow-up cover for “Wildcat Arrows”  second in line in her ongoing self-publishing fiasco took the ultimate prize in WTF moments… seriously I feel like I now understand why there are so many people involved in the publishing process. She needs someone in her crew of people to say “Hey, that looks like S#!t don’t go there!”

spam word: Problems76… the number of things I spotted wrong with this cover!

To clear something up…

Dara Joy DID NOT release her books through an e-publisher. She self-published them. E-publishers (the good ones which are real businesses) have real cover artists who use real photos and models to make real covers. Dara Joy has…I dunno, her webmaster/contact guy who, I think, takes pictures of himself and lengthens the arms to impossible proportions to violate some magazine cutout.

Oh, and e-publishers also give you your books immediately upon payment. They don’t make you wait two weeks to send you an electronic file with password protection on it.

That’s all :).

Showed to BF…he said he doesn’t know which part to pick on first…

acckkk…..

Generally I don’t make snide and insulting remarks about photoshopped things because my own abilities with photoshop literally begin and end with ‘photoshop - that a way to use the computers to make pictures or play with an existing one, right?’  I don’t make art with photoshop, I don’t even make bad photoshopped things.  I have no photoshop, and haven’t even seen photoshop on a computer I could touch.

but oh merciful Lord, those are awful!  My eyes, they burn….  what has been seen cannot be unseen…

As has been mentioned, cutting out pictures from magazines would be better… borrowing existing hardcopy paper book covers and replacing the words would be better…  You know, abstract swirls with near-glowing neon letters and swoopy swirls would be better that…. those.

For that matter, just get out ye olde paper and pencils, draw out some people freehand, and apply ye olde colored pencils or watercolors… that could be very impressive with a good artist.

As for… that - I have read a couple of Dara Joy’s older books, and found them fairly enjoyable in the mental junk-food sort of way (I don’t think I would have liked actually meeting any of the main characters, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in their places, and I didn’t feel like the book had any deeper meaning than ‘see the pretty woman who isn’t quite happy, see the gorgeous guy, put them together, watch the sparks fly!  They have sex - lots of really great sex (but they don’t talk to each other!) and in the end they shall live happily ever after (with lots of great sex)’.  Good for a few hours of diversion, but most of it doesn’t stick.  And sometimes that’s exactly what you want - a couple hours pleasant diversion from your life.  (And sometimes you want one that at least considers historical settings and their issues, or tries to paint a vivid image of there/then.  Sometimes you want to play with different personalities and circumstances…  But the paperbacks that I saw had interesting covers, much, much better than… those.

Would it be too much to ask that if you can’t get good cover art, just stick a background color behind the words so you don’t scare people away?  Because… those look scary.

press99 - would pressing 99 make those pictures go away? or should that be 911?

Call me stupid, but what does the Bravo, Bravo Quebec stand for? The rest of it I got.

Keri… It’s Bar B Que.

I grew up in a houseful of fashion police, where the motto was,  “spandex is a privilege, not a right.”  I’m thinking PhotoShop should also be classified as such. Or at very least, one must pass a test and be certified before being allowed to use it.

Also, if you stare at the cover and let your eyes go out of focus (or glaze over), you can see there are all sorts of other pictures within the picture.  Not sure if it’s supposed to be some sort of subliminal thing, or just shitty covering up of previously pirated images.  For example, look at her strangely masculine arm draped in red. Start at the freakishly broken thumb that has been severed from a corpse and attached here ... and follow it up past her elbow, just to the left of pretty boy’s nipple, There’s another man’s face—as if he has his arm around her and his head on her shoulder.  If that’s really just her arm, and not another man w/ his arms around her, then she really needs to get that second elbow/broken arm looked at.  If it is another dude (and a third echoed on her other shoulder), then pretty boy has a lot more to be worried about, as he’s got a veritable orgy sprouting from his loins. Makes me wonder how he can be that top-heavy, yet still stand upright.

Diane
who normally sees double, and having stared at that cover for so long can no longer focus at all. :oP Please excuse any typos, as I can no longer focus on the print enough to see them

Diane ;oP

Has anyone seen the MSDS sheets on these? Because I’m pretty sure they could be labeled as a toxic waste…of resources.

Surely there’s a child somewhere in need of a computer. And who would know how to use it for good instead of evil.

method95   Yeah, there are at least 95 methods of avoiding this level of crapitude. My favorite being: Hire a damn professional.

@KeriM, I was about to ask the same question. I guessed it was barbecue, but I can’t figure out how that goes with OMGWTF. Unless, mayhaps, it is over my tired little head.

Anony Miss,

I know this has been discussed on SBTB somewhere, but I can’t find the link.  You can check it out here though:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=omgwtfbbq

@jinap, bless you. I’m feeling infinitely hipper now.

Yeah, the cover is hideous, but Dara was in a bad place at the time. She was in a lawsuit with her publisher at the time and was in debt due to all the court costs. Probably couldn’t afford a cover artist.

Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god AHHHHHHH

WHO ROIDED OUT MICHAEL JACKSON AND GLUED PART OF A WOMAN TO HIM?!

I think I could only recreate something that HIDEOUSLY AWESOME if I drank a bottle of Jack, smoked some crack, dropped acid, got a body cavity search from a large woman with a hairy mole named Bertha, and then ROLLLLLLED my face across my keyboard for layer one.  Then rooooollllllleeeedddd my ass cheeks across my keyboard for layer two.  Then had my cat, high on catnip, finish it up.

THEN AND ONLY THEN could I perhaps duplicate this wonderfulness.

Hey Quaid, Quato wants to see you.

omg. omg, total eyebleach material. i really don’t get it. it looks likepicasso cossed with whoever did that “hungry caterpillar” book on drugs. drug specifically created to create a complete lack of taste and penchant for something ‘70s. is there now a dara joy line of unspeakable covers?